The issue here isn't that the driver misinterpreted the situation and took off. It's that they apparently behaved poorly, refusing to return the animal and then

The issue here isn't that the driver misinterpreted the situation and took off. It's that they apparently behaved poorly, refusing to return the animal and then dumping it somewhere; and that Lyft customer support was equally unhelpful until the story blew up on Twitter. The tech industry is really plumbing the depths of terrible / non-existent customer service and that's the meta story here, I suppose. Even airlines, insurance, and internet service providers tend to do better - the experience of dealing with them is usually aggravating, but you can generally reach a competent human being after a while. With tech, we basically have a complete disregard for what our users might be dealing with, and the only way to get real help is to make your story go viral on Twitter or Hackernews.